


a failed prototype

by jessequicksters



Series: golden ages [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe Selves, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, In Loving Memory of Tony Stark, M/M, Multiverse, Not A Fix-It, One of Ya'll Should've Called, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), References to Depression, Regret, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 05:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18772357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessequicksters/pseuds/jessequicksters
Summary: Steve learns that time is not a forgiving entity. He's trapped in between alternate timelines after the events of Avengers: Endgame, desperately trying, but unable to go back to the present. He lands in another version of the future where Tony Stark is still alive, living on a farm and is in a loving, thriving relationship with none other than Steve himself.





	a failed prototype

**Author's Note:**

> this is sad

Steven Grant Rogers’ mother had taught him the importance of counting his blessings for as long as she lived, so it’s a wonder why he doesn’t do it more often. Maybe it’s because the older he gets, the less and less he thinks of things as blessings as opposed to sheer luck; divine probability is something that has been ingrained into him the entire time he’s been living in the future, one of the enduring lessons from a certain Tony Stark.

He’s not in the future, though, not anymore; instead lost in a tangle of time and versions of the past—any of which could’ve belonged to him, but didn’t. Because the timeline he belonged to was supposed to be the luckiest timeline in existence. One in fourteen million.

They were victors in the lottery of fate and somehow managed to revert the apocalypse.

He’s been a soldier long enough to know that victory never feels like a blessing.

He bolted from Peggy that very evening after they had their dance. Confronted by the sight of her inviting bedroom, empty with promises and a future he knew he never belonged to, Steve couldn’t do it. _Rain check on that dance,_ that was the only vow ever shared between the two of them. She had a husband, a family, and a life. Steve felt his insides twisting as the lights dimmed that night when she disappeared for a brief moment into the bathroom.

He left a note for her, saying, _I don’t belong here_ and left it on the dining room table next to the pair of wine glasses, untouched and still full. 

And perhaps this is penance for his sins, but he realized too little too late that this was all a mistake. He managed to steal some more Pym Particles from Hank but something went wrong, either the Particles were the wrong kind or the mechanics in his time travel device started to malfunction, because he now can’t seem to get to where he wants to be.

 

-

 

He ends up in the 1990s, where Carol first crash-lands in Los Angeles. He thinks about asking for her help, but it’s too soon and he doesn’t want to mess up any more timelines than he already has. It's a crucial point in Earth's shared history with the rest of the universe. He moves on to the early 2000s when Tony is still in the arms trade and SHIELD is keeping a tight eye on him. He forgets that Sharon’s still fresh out of training as a low-level agent back then and crosses paths with her in the hallway of a big gala dinner. She looks at him with a streak of something—not recognition, curiosity perhaps—but is far too focused on the job at hand to pay attention to him. 

Tony Stark has just finished making a big speech and is stumbling offstage, landing in the embrace of Obadiah Stane. Steve so desperately wants to help him, to tell him that this isn’t going to be his life for much longer and that there’s hope waiting for him on the other side. But then again, what good is hope in the future the decimation is going to happen all over again?

He thinks about his moral responsibility in this situation. He always seems to be forced to confront his values whenever he’s in the presence of Tony, consciously or not. Tony was always an advocate of preventative measures. Steve never believed in fighting for wars before they even began, but the whole damn future is one big war. Does he tell Tony, to turn his life around while he can, save himself from Afghanistan, or will that just lead to bigger calamities further down the line?

He gets lost inside his own head, clearly thinking too hard, because before he knows it someone bumps into him from behind.

“Oh, sorry there, handsome, how can I…” Tony trails off, looking him up and down with a glazed look across his eyes. He coughs, pulling himself together, “Can I, uh, be of any service for you tonight?”

Steve swallows as Tony’s gaze drops down to his mouth.

He’s forgotten how close they used to get, back in the day, into situations like this. Steve had always managed to keep it together back then, placing the buffer of their differences and tumultuous history in between them like a shield. It seemed to be enough to remind Tony every time that it was a bad idea, not that Tony was the only one who needed the reminder.

But now, Steve is faced with a slightly younger Tony Stark in front of him, without the tired lines on his face from all those years of friction between them—like a beating to the spirit—and none of the scars that spread on his body like a nasty, sentient weed consuming his heart and eventually, his life. It always wanted more of him. When it came to Tony Stark, it was always all or nothing, down to saving the world.

“Sorry, maybe you’re married or something, I should stop making assumptions about people—shit, let’s start again.” Tony pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I’d like that, so much,” Steve says, desperately.

“Yeah?”

He nods.

“Party’s just getting started but now that I’ve signed the cheque, no one’s waiting around for me anymore. What? Don’t look so sad, were you hoping to get a piece, too? I mean, I’d be happy to offer, but I’d like to give you a little something in return too.” 

Steve smiles, trying not to crack so early on.

“What’s your name, soldier?”

“How did you—”

“I know the type, trust me. Hard to work with, but something in me tells me that they could be worth it. What are you fighting for?” He purses his lips and bites down, and Steve’s itching to say something, do something, just _anything_ instead of just staring at him and freezing like a ghost detached from its body.

He’s a ghost; the realization hits him again and again, but never has it been so clear than when he’s looking into Tony’s eyes, who’s looking right back at him like he’s searching, begging for some type of meaning in life from Steve. It was always like this between them—wordless glances, silent yearning and the desperate hope that one of them would break their shell before the other.

Steve can’t bring himself to do that, not tonight, not with this version of Tony. It isn’t right, they don’t deserve each other, not like this. Not when they’re so far from where they need to be. Steve and Tony spent years fighting tooth and nail to meet each other in the middle and they came so, so close sometimes, only for it to be taken away from them at the very end. 

They’re more than just ships passing in the night; they’re two oceans that only ever got carried away by currents at the edges, waves barely brushing against the other—the hot, saline waters of Tony’s electric mind came tantalizingly close to Steve’s cooler, thicker disposition. He wishes they had dared to drift into each other back then, but Steve only got colder as the years went on and Tony’s anger grew like a tempest out of control.

Now, in a different time and a different life, Steve knows that they’ll never fully meet at peace. He slips away just as Tony is chatting up a beautiful woman and tries so desperately to re-adjust his time machine, to go back to his time, his life.

But as he said, he has a lot of time left to atone for his sins. 

 

-

 

Steve finds himself in the middle of a forest next. It’s a bright summer day and there are flies buzzing around his face, the sickly scent of the dried marshes nearby and bees—lots of them, actually, more than he’s ever seen in his entire life. He stops to take a deep breath and smells nothing but the pure, unrefined air of nature around him.

It smells like a new life.

He hears the cracking of twigs and footsteps approaching and scurries over to hide behind a large tree. He peeks out and sees them approaching. His knees go weak as time stops. He knows the feeling of landing into the future all too well not to recognize it by now.

It’s Tony, alive and smiling, in jeans and a stained plaid shirt that’s dripping in sweat. Tony is alive and healthy and most of all, _happy_.

He’s not even alone, Steve notes. He sees himself, another version of Steven Grant Rogers, pulling a wheelbarrow full of logs in one hand while the other is interlinked with Tony’s. They pause to drink some water and Tony sits down on a large boulder.

“Honey, I’m beat, can we just stay here for a while? Maybe we could go for a swim, how does that sound?”

Steve hands over the water bottle to Tony and watches him drink from it as he runs his fingers through his hair. It’s a look that Steve recognizes but has never confronted before. It feels like an invasion of privacy, or perhaps, a breakthrough into the deeper part of him he’s worked so hard to conceal until now.

“Morgan’s coming over at noon, Tony. We need to finish the preparations for her birthday party.”

“I know, I know, but she’s like four! We’ve done the cleaning and the cooking and assembling the entertainment, which, for the record, I am solely responsible for, thank you very much. So that gives us another two hours before the cavalry arrives.” 

“You take at least an hour to get ready.”

“Which leaves us… another full hour,” Tony says, pulling Steve down by the hips until their noses touch, “to do whatever we want.” 

“Yeah?” Steve smiles into the kiss, lowering himself onto a comfortable sitting position on Tony’s lap.

“Yeah,” Tony replies in a contented hum. “Oh, that’s it, baby.” 

They kiss like they’ve been familiar with each other for centuries. Steve notices the way Tony hugs him tight like a lucid dream under the mid-morning sun, filled to the brim with some kind of meaning that Steve has yet to decipher or find himself in his own life. He notices the way that that version of himself kisses Tony so gently, so delicately, like someone who’s been through the trenches of war over and over again and has finally found a quiet place to seek shelter. 

It dawns on him, as the two of them smile at each other and talk about their plans for the rest of the day and the mundane future of their week, that Steve is witnessing, for the first time, love.

It’s all the more jarring to think that that’s him, content and in love with a man that seemed impossible to grasp in the timeline that he’s from. What is it about these two that made them work? How did Steve, for all his years of trying to combat the loneliness, hurt and pain inside of him, never manage to come close to any of this? He must’ve done something wrong somewhere that knocked himself off _this_ path and led himself astray.

Steven Grant Rogers is a man who has nothing. He is also a man who doesn’t belong to any time or place. 

Steve, by all accounts and purposes, shouldn’t exist.

When the two of them finally walk away, Steve tries one last time to bring himself back to the present. He doesn’t see the other Steve coming until they’re face-to-face with each other in the middle of the woods. 

Shit. 

He throws his hands in the air as the other Steve drops his axe. 

“I’m not here to fight,” Steve says and means it for the first time in years. He’s tired. He wants to go home, wherever that is.

“I believe you.” He nods back at Steve with a sympathetic gaze. He’s slightly older than him, by a couple of years at least. He looks happy, for the most part, but Steve can recognize a flicker of guilt when he sees it, especially when he sees it in himself.

“How did this all happen?”

Steve takes him to a bench by the lake and tells him everything.

He hates it, listening to the story of Thanos all over again; the stones, the gauntlet, the snap—the difference was that in this timeline, they never reversed it.

“You chose not to?” Steve asks himself.

“We were planning to, but by the time we found Thanos, we saw a vision of the future where we win. One in fourteen million. You know I—we never cared much about the odds being stacked against us. Pushing through the impossible had always been second nature. But after seeing what happened, that Tony—Tony doesn’t make it, I couldn’t do it.”

“Tony chose not to do anything?”

He chuckles. “Of course not. Tony was ready to go for all of us, but things were still quite fragile at the time. He just got back from space and was still on the road to recovery. We mapped out a plan in the meantime, wrote down every option, every possibility that could’ve led to a different outcome. Nothing worked, the odds were accurate, as Tony would say—”

“—Numbers don’t lie, people are just too scared to face them.”

“Yeah. I never believed in fate or the idea that things are set in stone, but it really got me thinking: if we were never going to be able to fix this mess, what am I going to do with my life? If I can spend the rest of my days dedicating my life to one thing, after losing so much, what would I do? What would anybody do?

Steve understands now, the question that’s been permeating his mind for as long as he can remember.

“I’d spend it with somebody I loved, somebody who makes me believe in the future again, even when the world can make us believe that it’s been taken away from us.”

His other self nods along, looking out into the clear waters of the lake. “And what better man to ride into the future with than the futurist himself?” 

They sit in silence for a while. Steve is still aching inside. He doesn’t know if anything will ever be able to fix this. He misses Tony. He mourns for the connection they only had in short, broken verses. He regrets the time they wasted, on their ego and pride, too stubborn to build bridges when it mattered. He’s sorry for not being there when Tony needed him. He’s so, so sorry, _Tony, if you’re out there listening_ —

Steve puts a hand on his shoulder as if he’s just heard every word in his head.

“He knows, Steve. Trust me. God knows it’s never been easy when it comes to the two of us, but this is who we are. Being Captain America and Iron Man, it’s about making the hard choices so that no one else has to.”

“You didn’t seem to struggle much, with the choice you made,” Steve says, fully aware of the bitterness that seeps through the statement. 

“You’re right, maybe I don’t deserve any of this, but this is the life I committed to. If my understanding of the multiverse is correct, that means that all fourteen million of us, at the exact same point in time, had a choice to make that would determine the fate of billions of lives. Fate or not, we all led such wildly different lives and the culmination of choices we made up to that point in time meant that only one of us was going to get it exactly right.”

“I tell myself every day that it was the right thing to do and it is, but if I had known—” 

“—If you had known, you would’ve flinched for a split second and that chance, that choice, would’ve passed you by. You saved the universe, that shouldn’t be taken lightly.” 

“Oh, I don't. I feel the weight of it every single day. I wish I could just move on but I can’t, knowing that the one person who should’ve been my lifeline, my tether to the present and my guide to the future is just—” Steve sighs. He doesn’t know what the point of this is anymore. “He’s gone, okay? He needed me, even after all those years pretending otherwise. I wish I’d known. Why—why didn’t he just call? Why didn't I?”

After a pause, Steve asks, “If you don’t mind me asking, was it worth it?”

He takes a deep breath and shakes his head; there are no more blessings left to count, no angels walking on the ruins of this Earth, only people who learned to build a new life and move on. Steven Grant Rogers had found a family but lost them in a fleeting moment of desperation. After all, that seemed to be their story in a nutshell: a desperate moment, never caught, snatched away by the winds of time. No one is to blame in the end; they’re all at the mercy of galactic currents, constantly shifting and slipping away beneath their feet. If only they had held on, though. Or even just tried to.

“No. It wasn’t worth it.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> (the other two parts of the series feature the alt! steve and tony so if you want to check out their journey, far more successful than mcu!prime stevetony, that is where you should go to mend your soul)


End file.
